Header logo is

76 results (View BibTeX file of all listed publications)

2006

no image
Conformal Multi-Instance Kernels

Blaschko, M., Hofmann, T.

In NIPS 2006 Workshop on Learning to Compare Examples, pages: 1-6, NIPS Workshop on Learning to Compare Examples, December 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
In the multiple instance learning setting, each observation is a bag of feature vectors of which one or more vectors indicates membership in a class. The primary task is to identify if any vectors in the bag indicate class membership while ignoring vectors that do not. We describe here a kernel-based technique that defines a parametric family of kernels via conformal transformations and jointly learns a discriminant function over bags together with the optimal parameter settings of the kernel. Learning a conformal transformation effectively amounts to weighting regions in the feature space according to their contribution to classification accuracy; regions that are discriminative will be weighted higher than regions that are not. This allows the classifier to focus on regions contributing to classification accuracy while ignoring regions that correspond to vectors found both in positive and in negative bags. We show how parameters of this transformation can be learned for support vector machines by posing the problem as a multiple kernel learning problem. The resulting multiple instance classifier gives competitive accuracy for several multi-instance benchmark datasets from different domains.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

2006

ei Blaschko, M., Hofmann, T. Conformal Multi-Instance Kernels In NIPS 2006 Workshop on Learning to Compare Examples, pages: 1-6, NIPS Workshop on Learning to Compare Examples, December 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web [BibTex]

no image
Minimal Logical Constraint Covering Sets

Sinz, F., Schölkopf, B.

(155), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, December 2006 (techreport)

Abstract
We propose a general framework for computing minimal set covers under class of certain logical constraints. The underlying idea is to transform the problem into a mathematical programm under linear constraints. In this sense it can be seen as a natural extension of the vector quantization algorithm proposed by Tipping and Schoelkopf. We show which class of logical constraints can be cast and relaxed into linear constraints and give an algorithm for the transformation.

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Sinz, F., Schölkopf, B. Minimal Logical Constraint Covering Sets (155), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, December 2006 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

no image
Adapting Spatial Filter Methods for Nonstationary BCIs

Tomioka, R., Hill, J., Blankertz, B., Aihara, K.

In IBIS 2006, pages: 65-70, 2006 Workshop on Information-Based Induction Sciences, November 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
A major challenge in applying machine learning methods to Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) is to overcome the possible nonstationarity in the data from the datablock the method is trained on and that the method is applied to. Assuming the joint distributions of the whitened signal and the class label to be identical in two blocks, where the whitening is done in each block independently, we propose a simple adaptation formula that is applicable to a broad class of spatial filtering methods including ICA, CSP, and logistic regression classifiers. We characterize the class of linear transformations for which the above assumption holds. Experimental results on 60 BCI datasets show improved classification accuracy compared to (a) fixed spatial filter approach (no adaptation) and (b) fixed spatial pattern approach (proposed by Hill et al., 2006 [1]).

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Tomioka, R., Hill, J., Blankertz, B., Aihara, K. Adapting Spatial Filter Methods for Nonstationary BCIs In IBIS 2006, pages: 65-70, 2006 Workshop on Information-Based Induction Sciences, November 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF [BibTex]

no image
New Methods for the P300 Visual Speller

Biessmann, F.

(1), (Editors: Hill, J. ), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, November 2006 (techreport)

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Biessmann, F. New Methods for the P300 Visual Speller (1), (Editors: Hill, J. ), Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, November 2006 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

no image
Geometric Analysis of Hilbert Schmidt Independence criterion based ICA contrast function

Shen, H., Jegelka, S., Gretton, A.

(PA006080), National ICT Australia, Canberra, Australia, October 2006 (techreport)

ei

Web [BibTex]

ei Shen, H., Jegelka, S., Gretton, A. Geometric Analysis of Hilbert Schmidt Independence criterion based ICA contrast function (PA006080), National ICT Australia, Canberra, Australia, October 2006 (techreport)

Web [BibTex]

no image
A Linear Programming Approach for Molecular QSAR analysis

Saigo, H., Kadowaki, T., Tsuda, K.

In MLG 2006, pages: 85-96, (Editors: Gärtner, T. , G. C. Garriga, T. Meinl), International Workshop on Mining and Learning with Graphs, September 2006, Best Paper Award (inproceedings)

Abstract
Small molecules in chemistry can be represented as graphs. In a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) analysis, the central task is to find a regression function that predicts the activity of the molecule in high accuracy. Setting a QSAR as a primal target, we propose a new linear programming approach to the graph-based regression problem. Our method extends the graph classification algorithm by Kudo et al. (NIPS 2004), which is a combination of boosting and graph mining. Instead of sequential multiplicative updates, we employ the linear programming boosting (LP) for regression. The LP approach allows to include inequality constraints for the parameter vector, which turns out to be particularly useful in QSAR tasks where activity values are sometimes unavailable. Furthermore, the efficiency is improved significantly by employing multiple pricing.

ei

PDF PDF [BibTex]

ei Saigo, H., Kadowaki, T., Tsuda, K. A Linear Programming Approach for Molecular QSAR analysis In MLG 2006, pages: 85-96, (Editors: Gärtner, T. , G. C. Garriga, T. Meinl), International Workshop on Mining and Learning with Graphs, September 2006, Best Paper Award (inproceedings)

PDF PDF [BibTex]

no image
Incremental Aspect Models for Mining Document Streams

Surendran, A., Sra, S.

In PKDD 2006, pages: 633-640, (Editors: Fürnkranz, J. , T. Scheffer, M. Spiliopoulou), Springer, Berlin, Germany, 10th European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, September 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
In this paper we introduce a novel approach for incrementally building aspect models, and use it to dynamically discover underlying themes from document streams. Using the new approach we present an application which we call “query-line tracking” i.e., we automatically discover and summarize different themes or stories that appear over time, and that relate to a particular query. We present evaluation on news corpora to demonstrate the strength of our method for both query-line tracking, online indexing and clustering.

ei

Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Surendran, A., Sra, S. Incremental Aspect Models for Mining Document Streams In PKDD 2006, pages: 633-640, (Editors: Fürnkranz, J. , T. Scheffer, M. Spiliopoulou), Springer, Berlin, Germany, 10th European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, September 2006 (inproceedings)

Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
PALMA: Perfect Alignments using Large Margin Algorithms

Rätsch, G., Hepp, B., Schulze, U., Ong, C.

In GCB 2006, pages: 104-113, (Editors: Huson, D. , O. Kohlbacher, A. Lupas, K. Nieselt, A. Zell), Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn, Germany, German Conference on Bioinformatics, September 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Despite many years of research on how to properly align sequences in the presence of sequencing errors, alternative splicing and micro-exons, the correct alignment of mRNA sequences to genomic DNA is still a challenging task. We present a novel approach based on large margin learning that combines kernel based splice site predictions with common sequence alignment techniques. By solving a convex optimization problem, our algorithm -- called PALMA -- tunes the parameters of the model such that the true alignment scores higher than all other alignments. In an experimental study on the alignments of mRNAs containing artificially generated micro-exons, we show that our algorithm drastically outperforms all other methods: It perfectly aligns all 4358 sequences on an hold-out set, while the best other method misaligns at least 90 of them. Moreover, our algorithm is very robust against noise in the query sequence: when deleting, inserting, or mutating up to 50% of the query sequence, it still aligns 95% of all sequences correctly, while other methods achieve less than 36% accuracy. For datasets, additional results and a stand-alone alignment tool see http://www.fml.mpg.de/raetsch/projects/palma.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Rätsch, G., Hepp, B., Schulze, U., Ong, C. PALMA: Perfect Alignments using Large Margin Algorithms In GCB 2006, pages: 104-113, (Editors: Huson, D. , O. Kohlbacher, A. Lupas, K. Nieselt, A. Zell), Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn, Germany, German Conference on Bioinformatics, September 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web [BibTex]

no image
Graph Based Semi-Supervised Learning with Sharper Edges

Shin, H., Hill, N., Rätsch, G.

In ECML 2006, pages: 401-412, (Editors: Fürnkranz, J. , T. Scheffer, M. Spiliopoulou), Springer, Berlin, Germany, 17th European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML), September 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
In many graph-based semi-supervised learning algorithms, edge weights are assumed to be fixed and determined by the data points‘ (often symmetric)relationships in input space, without considering directionality. However, relationships may be more informative in one direction (e.g. from labelled to unlabelled) than in the reverse direction, and some relationships (e.g. strong weights between oppositely labelled points) are unhelpful in either direction. Undesirable edges may reduce the amount of influence an informative point can propagate to its neighbours -- the point and its outgoing edges have been ``blunted.‘‘ We present an approach to ``sharpening‘‘ in which weights are adjusted to meet an optimization criterion wherever they are directed towards labelled points. This principle can be applied to a wide variety of algorithms. In the current paper, we present one ad hoc solution satisfying the principle, in order to show that it can improve performance on a number of publicly available benchmark data sets.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Shin, H., Hill, N., Rätsch, G. Graph Based Semi-Supervised Learning with Sharper Edges In ECML 2006, pages: 401-412, (Editors: Fürnkranz, J. , T. Scheffer, M. Spiliopoulou), Springer, Berlin, Germany, 17th European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML), September 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
Semi-Supervised Learning

Chapelle, O., Schölkopf, B., Zien, A.

pages: 508, Adaptive computation and machine learning, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, September 2006 (book)

Abstract
In the field of machine learning, semi-supervised learning (SSL) occupies the middle ground, between supervised learning (in which all training examples are labeled) and unsupervised learning (in which no label data are given). Interest in SSL has increased in recent years, particularly because of application domains in which unlabeled data are plentiful, such as images, text, and bioinformatics. This first comprehensive overview of SSL presents state-of-the-art algorithms, a taxonomy of the field, selected applications, benchmark experiments, and perspectives on ongoing and future research. Semi-Supervised Learning first presents the key assumptions and ideas underlying the field: smoothness, cluster or low-density separation, manifold structure, and transduction. The core of the book is the presentation of SSL methods, organized according to algorithmic strategies. After an examination of generative models, the book describes algorithms that implement the low-density separation assumption, graph-based methods, and algorithms that perform two-step learning. The book then discusses SSL applications and offers guidelines for SSL practitioners by analyzing the results of extensive benchmark experiments. Finally, the book looks at interesting directions for SSL research. The book closes with a discussion of the relationship between semi-supervised learning and transduction.

ei

Web [BibTex]

ei Chapelle, O., Schölkopf, B., Zien, A. Semi-Supervised Learning pages: 508, Adaptive computation and machine learning, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, September 2006 (book)

Web [BibTex]

no image
Finite-Horizon Optimal State-Feedback Control of Nonlinear Stochastic Systems Based on a Minimum Principle

Deisenroth, MP., Ohtsuka, T., Weissel, F., Brunn, D., Hanebeck, UD.

In MFI 2006, pages: 371-376, (Editors: Hanebeck, U. D.), IEEE Service Center, Piscataway, NJ, USA, 6th IEEE International Conference on Multisensor Fusion and Integration, September 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
In this paper, an approach to the finite-horizon optimal state-feedback control problem of nonlinear, stochastic, discrete-time systems is presented. Starting from the dynamic programming equation, the value function will be approximated by means of Taylor series expansion up to second-order derivatives. Moreover, the problem will be reformulated, such that a minimum principle can be applied to the stochastic problem. Employing this minimum principle, the optimal control problem can be rewritten as a two-point boundary-value problem to be solved at each time step of a shrinking horizon. To avoid numerical problems, the two-point boundary-value problem will be solved by means of a continuation method. Thus, the curse of dimensionality of dynamic programming is avoided, and good candidates for the optimal state-feedback controls are obtained. The proposed approach will be evaluated by means of a scalar example system.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Deisenroth, MP., Ohtsuka, T., Weissel, F., Brunn, D., Hanebeck, UD. Finite-Horizon Optimal State-Feedback Control of Nonlinear Stochastic Systems Based on a Minimum Principle In MFI 2006, pages: 371-376, (Editors: Hanebeck, U. D.), IEEE Service Center, Piscataway, NJ, USA, 6th IEEE International Conference on Multisensor Fusion and Integration, September 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
Uniform Convergence of Adaptive Graph-Based Regularization

Hein, M.

In COLT 2006, pages: 50-64, (Editors: Lugosi, G. , H.-U. Simon), Springer, Berlin, Germany, 19th Annual Conference on Learning Theory, September 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
The regularization functional induced by the graph Laplacian of a random neighborhood graph based on the data is adaptive in two ways. First it adapts to an underlying manifold structure and second to the density of the data-generating probability measure. We identify in this paper the limit of the regularizer and show uniform convergence over the space of Hoelder functions. As an intermediate step we derive upper bounds on the covering numbers of Hoelder functions on compact Riemannian manifolds, which are of independent interest for the theoretical analysis of manifold-based learning methods.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Hein, M. Uniform Convergence of Adaptive Graph-Based Regularization In COLT 2006, pages: 50-64, (Editors: Lugosi, G. , H.-U. Simon), Springer, Berlin, Germany, 19th Annual Conference on Learning Theory, September 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
Regularised CSP for Sensor Selection in BCI

Farquhar, J., Hill, N., Lal, T., Schölkopf, B.

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Brain-Computer Interface Workshop and Training Course 2006, pages: 14-15, (Editors: GR Müller-Putz and C Brunner and R Leeb and R Scherer and A Schlögl and S Wriessnegger and G Pfurtscheller), Verlag der Technischen Universität Graz, Graz, Austria, 3rd International Brain-Computer Interface Workshop and Training Course, September 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
The Common Spatial Pattern (CSP) algorithm is a highly successful method for efficiently calculating spatial filters for brain signal classification. Spatial filtering can improve classification performance considerably, but demands that a large number of electrodes be mounted, which is inconvenient in day-to-day BCI usage. The CSP algorithm is also known for its tendency to overfit, i.e. to learn the noise in the training set rather than the signal. Both problems motivate an approach in which spatial filters are sparsified. We briefly sketch a reformulation of the problem which allows us to do this, using 1-norm regularisation. Focusing on the electrode selection issue, we present preliminary results on EEG data sets that suggest that effective spatial filters may be computed with as few as 10--20 electrodes, hence offering the potential to simplify the practical realisation of BCI systems significantly.

ei

PDF PDF [BibTex]

ei Farquhar, J., Hill, N., Lal, T., Schölkopf, B. Regularised CSP for Sensor Selection in BCI In Proceedings of the 3rd International Brain-Computer Interface Workshop and Training Course 2006, pages: 14-15, (Editors: GR Müller-Putz and C Brunner and R Leeb and R Scherer and A Schlögl and S Wriessnegger and G Pfurtscheller), Verlag der Technischen Universität Graz, Graz, Austria, 3rd International Brain-Computer Interface Workshop and Training Course, September 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF PDF [BibTex]

no image
Time-Dependent Demixing of Task-Relevant EEG Signals

Hill, N., Farquhar, J., Lal, T., Schölkopf, B.

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Brain-Computer Interface Workshop and Training Course 2006, pages: 20-21, (Editors: GR Müller-Putz and C Brunner and R Leeb and R Scherer and A Schlögl and S Wriessnegger and G Pfurtscheller), Verlag der Technischen Universität Graz, Graz, Austria, 3rd International Brain-Computer Interface Workshop and Training Course, September 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Given a spatial filtering algorithm that has allowed us to identify task-relevant EEG sources, we present a simple approach for monitoring the activity of these sources while remaining relatively robust to changes in other (task-irrelevant) brain activity. The idea is to keep spatial *patterns* fixed rather than spatial filters, when transferring from training to test sessions or from one time window to another. We show that a fixed spatial pattern (FSP) approach, using a moving-window estimate of signal covariances, can be more robust to non-stationarity than a fixed spatial filter (FSF) approach.

ei

PDF PDF [BibTex]

ei Hill, N., Farquhar, J., Lal, T., Schölkopf, B. Time-Dependent Demixing of Task-Relevant EEG Signals In Proceedings of the 3rd International Brain-Computer Interface Workshop and Training Course 2006, pages: 20-21, (Editors: GR Müller-Putz and C Brunner and R Leeb and R Scherer and A Schlögl and S Wriessnegger and G Pfurtscheller), Verlag der Technischen Universität Graz, Graz, Austria, 3rd International Brain-Computer Interface Workshop and Training Course, September 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF PDF [BibTex]

no image
A Sober Look at Clustering Stability

Ben-David, S., von Luxburg, U., Pal, D.

In COLT 2006, pages: 5-19, (Editors: Lugosi, G. , H.-U. Simon), Springer, Berlin, Germany, 19th Annual Conference on Learning Theory, September 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Stability is a common tool to verify the validity of sample based algorithms. In clustering it is widely used to tune the parameters of the algorithm, such as the number k of clusters. In spite of the popularity of stability in practical applications, there has been very little theoretical analysis of this notion. In this paper we provide a formal definition of stability and analyze some of its basic properties. Quite surprisingly, the conclusion of our analysis is that for large sample size, stability is fully determined by the behavior of the objective function which the clustering algorithm is aiming to minimize. If the objective function has a unique global minimizer, the algorithm is stable, otherwise it is unstable. In particular we conclude that stability is not a well-suited tool to determine the number of clusters - it is determined by the symmetries of the data which may be unrelated to clustering parameters. We prove our results for center-based clusterings and for spectral clustering, and support our conclusions by many examples in which the behavior of stability is counter-intuitive.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Ben-David, S., von Luxburg, U., Pal, D. A Sober Look at Clustering Stability In COLT 2006, pages: 5-19, (Editors: Lugosi, G. , H.-U. Simon), Springer, Berlin, Germany, 19th Annual Conference on Learning Theory, September 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
Information Marginalization on Subgraphs

Huang, J., Zhu, T., Rereiner, R., Zhou, D., Schuurmans, D.

In ECML/PKDD 2006, pages: 199-210, (Editors: Fürnkranz, J. , T. Scheffer, M. Spiliopoulou), Springer, Berlin, Germany, 10th European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, September 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Real-world data often involves objects that exhibit multiple relationships; for example, ‘papers’ and ‘authors’ exhibit both paper-author interactions and paper-paper citation relationships. A typical learning problem requires one to make inferences about a subclass of objects (e.g. ‘papers’), while using the remaining objects and relations to provide relevant information. We present a simple, unified mechanism for incorporating information from multiple object types and relations when learning on a targeted subset. In this scheme, all sources of relevant information are marginalized onto the target subclass via random walks. We show that marginalized random walks can be used as a general technique for combining multiple sources of information in relational data. With this approach, we formulate new algorithms for transduction and ranking in relational data, and quantify the performance of new schemes on real world data—achieving good results in many problems.

ei

Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Huang, J., Zhu, T., Rereiner, R., Zhou, D., Schuurmans, D. Information Marginalization on Subgraphs In ECML/PKDD 2006, pages: 199-210, (Editors: Fürnkranz, J. , T. Scheffer, M. Spiliopoulou), Springer, Berlin, Germany, 10th European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, September 2006 (inproceedings)

Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
Bayesian Active Learning for Sensitivity Analysis

Pfingsten, T.

In ECML 2006, pages: 353-364, (Editors: Fürnkranz, J. , T. Scheffer, M. Spiliopoulou), Springer, Berlin, Germany, 17th European Conference on Machine Learning, September 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Designs of micro electro-mechanical devices need to be robust against fluctuations in mass production. Computer experiments with tens of parameters are used to explore the behavior of the system, and to compute sensitivity measures as expectations over the input distribution. Monte Carlo methods are a simple approach to estimate these integrals, but they are infeasible when the models are computationally expensive. Using a Gaussian processes prior, expensive simulation runs can be saved. This Bayesian quadrature allows for an active selection of inputs where the simulation promises to be most valuable, and the number of simulation runs can be reduced further. We present an active learning scheme for sensitivity analysis which is rigorously derived from the corresponding Bayesian expected loss. On three fully featured, high dimensional physical models of electro-mechanical sensors, we show that the learning rate in the active learning scheme is significantly better than for passive learning.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Pfingsten, T. Bayesian Active Learning for Sensitivity Analysis In ECML 2006, pages: 353-364, (Editors: Fürnkranz, J. , T. Scheffer, M. Spiliopoulou), Springer, Berlin, Germany, 17th European Conference on Machine Learning, September 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
A tutorial on spectral clustering

von Luxburg, U.

(149), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, August 2006 (techreport)

Abstract
In recent years, spectral clustering has become one of the most popular modern clustering algorithms. It is simple to implement, can be solved efficiently by standard linear algebra software, and very often outperforms traditional clustering algorithms such as the k-means algorithm. Nevertheless, on the first glance spectral clustering looks a bit mysterious, and it is not obvious to see why it works at all and what it really does. This article is a tutorial introduction to spectral clustering. We describe different graph Laplacians and their basic properties, present the most common spectral clustering algorithms, and derive those algorithms from scratch by several different approaches. Advantages and disadvantages of the different spectral clustering algorithms are discussed.

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei von Luxburg, U. A tutorial on spectral clustering (149), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, August 2006 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

no image
Towards the Inference of Graphs on Ordered Vertexes

Zien, A., Raetsch, G., Ong, C.

(150), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, August 2006 (techreport)

Abstract
We propose novel methods for machine learning of structured output spaces. Specifically, we consider outputs which are graphs with vertices that have a natural order. We consider the usual adjacency matrix representation of graphs, as well as two other representations for such a graph: (a) decomposing the graph into a set of paths, (b) converting the graph into a single sequence of nodes with labeled edges. For each of the three representations, we propose an encoding and decoding scheme. We also propose an evaluation measure for comparing two graphs.

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Zien, A., Raetsch, G., Ong, C. Towards the Inference of Graphs on Ordered Vertexes (150), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, August 2006 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

no image
Supervised Probabilistic Principal Component Analysis

Yu, S., Yu, K., Tresp, V., Kriegel, H., Wu, M.

In KDD 2006, pages: 464-473, (Editors: Ungar, L. ), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 12th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, August 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Principal component analysis (PCA) has been extensively applied in data mining, pattern recognition and information retrieval for unsupervised dimensionality reduction. When labels of data are available, e.g.,~in a classification or regression task, PCA is however not able to use this information. The problem is more interesting if only part of the input data are labeled, i.e.,~in a semi-supervised setting. In this paper we propose a supervised PCA model called SPPCA and a semi-supervised PCA model called S$^2$PPCA, both of which are extensions of a probabilistic PCA model. The proposed models are able to incorporate the label information into the projection phase, and can naturally handle multiple outputs (i.e.,~in multi-task learning problems). We derive an efficient EM learning algorithm for both models, and also provide theoretical justifications of the model behaviors. SPPCA and S$^2$PPCA are compared with other supervised projection methods on various learning tasks, and show not only promising performance but also good scalability.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Yu, S., Yu, K., Tresp, V., Kriegel, H., Wu, M. Supervised Probabilistic Principal Component Analysis In KDD 2006, pages: 464-473, (Editors: Ungar, L. ), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 12th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, August 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
A Continuation Method for Semi-Supervised SVMs

Chapelle, O., Chi, M., Zien, A.

In ICML 2006, pages: 185-192, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Semi-Supervised Support Vector Machines (S3VMs) are an appealing method for using unlabeled data in classification: their objective function favors decision boundaries which do not cut clusters. However their main problem is that the optimization problem is non-convex and has many local minima, which often results in suboptimal performances. In this paper we propose to use a global optimization technique known as continuation to alleviate this problem. Compared to other algorithms minimizing the same objective function, our continuation method often leads to lower test errors.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Chapelle, O., Chi, M., Zien, A. A Continuation Method for Semi-Supervised SVMs In ICML 2006, pages: 185-192, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
Trading Convexity for Scalability

Collobert, R., Sinz, F., Weston, J., Bottou, L.

In ICML 2006, pages: 201-208, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Convex learning algorithms, such as Support Vector Machines (SVMs), are often seen as highly desirable because they offer strong practical properties and are amenable to theoretical analysis. However, in this work we show how non-convexity can provide scalability advantages over convexity. We show how concave-convex programming can be applied to produce (i) faster SVMs where training errors are no longer support vectors, and (ii) much faster Transductive SVMs.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Collobert, R., Sinz, F., Weston, J., Bottou, L. Trading Convexity for Scalability In ICML 2006, pages: 201-208, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
Personalized handwriting recognition via biased regularization

Kienzle, W., Chellapilla, K.

In ICML 2006, pages: 457-464, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
We present a new approach to personalized handwriting recognition. The problem, also known as writer adaptation, consists of converting a generic (user-independent) recognizer into a personalized (user-dependent) one, which has an improved recognition rate for a particular user. The adaptation step usually involves user-specific samples, which leads to the fundamental question of how to fuse this new information with that captured by the generic recognizer. We propose adapting the recognizer by minimizing a regularized risk functional (a modified SVM) where the prior knowledge from the generic recognizer enters through a modified regularization term. The result is a simple personalization framework with very good practical properties. Experiments on a 100 class real-world data set show that the number of errors can be reduced by over 40% with as few as five user samples per character.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Kienzle, W., Chellapilla, K. Personalized handwriting recognition via biased regularization In ICML 2006, pages: 457-464, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
Deterministic annealing for semi-supervised kernel machines

Sindhwani, V., Keerthi, S., Chapelle, O.

In ICML 2006, pages: 841-848, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
An intuitive approach to utilizing unlabeled data in kernel-based classification algorithms is to simply treat the unknown labels as additional optimization variables. For margin-based loss functions, one can view this approach as attempting to learn low-density separators. However, this is a hard optimization problem to solve in typical semi-supervised settings where unlabeled data is abundant. The popular Transductive SVM algorithm is a label-switching-retraining procedure that is known to be susceptible to local minima. In this paper, we present a global optimization framework for semi-supervised Kernel machines where an easier problem is parametrically deformed to the original hard problem and minimizers are smoothly tracked. Our approach is motivated from deterministic annealing techniques and involves a sequence of convex optimization problems that are exactly and efficiently solved. We present empirical results on several synthetic and real world datasets that demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Sindhwani, V., Keerthi, S., Chapelle, O. Deterministic annealing for semi-supervised kernel machines In ICML 2006, pages: 841-848, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
Clustering Graphs by Weighted Substructure Mining

Tsuda, K., Kudo, T.

In ICML 2006, pages: 953-960, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Graph data is getting increasingly popular in, e.g., bioinformatics and text processing. A main difficulty of graph data processing lies in the intrinsic high dimensionality of graphs, namely, when a graph is represented as a binary feature vector of indicators of all possible subgraphs, the dimensionality gets too large for usual statistical methods. We propose an efficient method for learning a binomial mixture model in this feature space. Combining the $ell_1$ regularizer and the data structure called DFS code tree, the MAP estimate of non-zero parameters are computed efficiently by means of the EM algorithm. Our method is applied to the clustering of RNA graphs, and is compared favorably with graph kernels and the spectral graph distance.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Tsuda, K., Kudo, T. Clustering Graphs by Weighted Substructure Mining In ICML 2006, pages: 953-960, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
A Choice Model with Infinitely Many Latent Features

Görür, D., Jäkel, F., Rasmussen, C.

In ICML 2006, pages: 361-368, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Elimination by aspects (EBA) is a probabilistic choice model describing how humans decide between several options. The options from which the choice is made are characterized by binary features and associated weights. For instance, when choosing which mobile phone to buy the features to consider may be: long lasting battery, color screen, etc. Existing methods for inferring the parameters of the model assume pre-specified features. However, the features that lead to the observed choices are not always known. Here, we present a non-parametric Bayesian model to infer the features of the options and the corresponding weights from choice data. We use the Indian buffet process (IBP) as a prior over the features. Inference using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) in conjugate IBP models has been previously described. The main contribution of this paper is an MCMC algorithm for the EBA model that can also be used in inference for other non-conjugate IBP models---this may broaden the use of IBP priors considerably.

ei

PostScript PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Görür, D., Jäkel, F., Rasmussen, C. A Choice Model with Infinitely Many Latent Features In ICML 2006, pages: 361-368, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

PostScript PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
Learning High-Order MRF Priors of Color Images

McAuley, J., Caetano, T., Smola, A., Franz, MO.

In ICML 2006, pages: 617-624, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
In this paper, we use large neighborhood Markov random fields to learn rich prior models of color images. Our approach extends the monochromatic Fields of Experts model (Roth and Blackwell, 2005) to color images. In the Fields of Experts model, the curse of dimensionality due to very large clique sizes is circumvented by parameterizing the potential functions according to a product of experts. We introduce several simplifications of the original approach by Roth and Black which allow us to cope with the increased clique size (typically 3x3x3 or 5x5x3 pixels) of color images. Experimental results are presented for image denoising which evidence improvements over state-of-the-art monochromatic image priors.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei McAuley, J., Caetano, T., Smola, A., Franz, MO. Learning High-Order MRF Priors of Color Images In ICML 2006, pages: 617-624, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
Inference with the Universum

Weston, J., Collobert, R., Sinz, F., Bottou, L., Vapnik, V.

In ICML 2006, pages: 1009-1016, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
WIn this paper we study a new framework introduced by Vapnik (1998) and Vapnik (2006) that is an alternative capacity concept to the large margin approach. In the particular case of binary classification, we are given a set of labeled examples, and a collection of "non-examples" that do not belong to either class of interest. This collection, called the Universum, allows one to encode prior knowledge by representing meaningful concepts in the same domain as the problem at hand. We describe an algorithm to leverage the Universum by maximizing the number of observed contradictions, and show experimentally that this approach delivers accuracy improvements over using labeled data alone.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Weston, J., Collobert, R., Sinz, F., Bottou, L., Vapnik, V. Inference with the Universum In ICML 2006, pages: 1009-1016, (Editors: Cohen, W. W., A. Moore), ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, June 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
Statistical Convergence of Kernel CCA

Fukumizu, K., Bach, F., Gretton, A.

In Advances in neural information processing systems 18, pages: 387-394, (Editors: Weiss, Y. , B. Schölkopf, J. Platt), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, Nineteenth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), May 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
While kernel canonical correlation analysis (kernel CCA) has been applied in many problems, the asymptotic convergence of the functions estimated from a finite sample to the true functions has not yet been established. This paper gives a rigorous proof of the statistical convergence of kernel CCA and a related method (NOCCO), which provides a theoretical justification for these methods. The result also gives a sufficient condition on the decay of the regularization coefficient in the methods to ensure convergence.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Fukumizu, K., Bach, F., Gretton, A. Statistical Convergence of Kernel CCA In Advances in neural information processing systems 18, pages: 387-394, (Editors: Weiss, Y. , B. Schölkopf, J. Platt), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, Nineteenth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), May 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web [BibTex]

no image
Products of "Edge-perts"

Gehler, PV., Welling, M.

In Advances in neural information processing systems 18, pages: 419-426, (Editors: Weiss, Y. , B. Schölkopf, J. Platt), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, Nineteenth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), May 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Images represent an important and abundant source of data. Understanding their statistical structure has important applications such as image compression and restoration. In this paper we propose a particular kind of probabilistic model, dubbed the “products of edge-perts model” to describe the structure of wavelet transformed images. We develop a practical denoising algorithm based on a single edge-pert and show state-ofthe-art denoising performance on benchmark images.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Gehler, PV., Welling, M. Products of "Edge-perts" In Advances in neural information processing systems 18, pages: 419-426, (Editors: Weiss, Y. , B. Schölkopf, J. Platt), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, Nineteenth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), May 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web [BibTex]

no image
Assessing Approximations for Gaussian Process Classification

Kuss, M., Rasmussen, C.

In Advances in neural information processing systems 18, pages: 699-706, (Editors: Weiss, Y. , B. Schölkopf, J. Platt), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, Nineteenth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), May 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
Gaussian processes are attractive models for probabilistic classification but unfortunately exact inference is analytically intractable. We compare Laplace‘s method and Expectation Propagation (EP) focusing on marginal likelihood estimates and predictive performance. We explain theoretically and corroborate empirically that EP is superior to Laplace. We also compare to a sophisticated MCMC scheme and show that EP is surprisingly accurate.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Kuss, M., Rasmussen, C. Assessing Approximations for Gaussian Process Classification In Advances in neural information processing systems 18, pages: 699-706, (Editors: Weiss, Y. , B. Schölkopf, J. Platt), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, Nineteenth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), May 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web [BibTex]

no image
Learning an Interest Operator from Human Eye Movements

Kienzle, W., Wichmann, F., Schölkopf, B., Franz, M.

In CVPWR 2006, pages: page 24, (Editors: C Schmid and S Soatto and C Tomasi), IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, 2006 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshop, April 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
We present an approach for designing interest operators that are based on human eye movement statistics. In contrast to existing methods which use hand-crafted saliency measures, we use machine learning methods to infer an interest operator directly from eye movement data. That way, the operator provides a measure of biologically plausible interestingness. We describe the data collection, training, and evaluation process, and show that our learned saliency measure significantly accounts for human eye movements. Furthermore, we illustrate connections to existing interest operators, and present a multi-scale interest point detector based on the learned function.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Kienzle, W., Wichmann, F., Schölkopf, B., Franz, M. Learning an Interest Operator from Human Eye Movements In CVPWR 2006, pages: page 24, (Editors: C Schmid and S Soatto and C Tomasi), IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, 2006 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshop, April 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
Evaluating Predictive Uncertainty Challenge

Quinonero Candela, J., Rasmussen, C., Sinz, F., Bousquet, O., Schölkopf, B.

In Machine Learning Challenges: Evaluating Predictive Uncertainty, Visual Object Classification, and Recognising Tectual Entailment, pages: 1-27, (Editors: J Quiñonero Candela and I Dagan and B Magnini and F d’Alché-Buc), Springer, Berlin, Germany, First PASCAL Machine Learning Challenges Workshop (MLCW), April 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
This Chapter presents the PASCAL Evaluating Predictive Uncertainty Challenge, introduces the contributed Chapters by the participants who obtained outstanding results, and provides a discussion with some lessons to be learnt. The Challenge was set up to evaluate the ability of Machine Learning algorithms to provide good “probabilistic predictions”, rather than just the usual “point predictions” with no measure of uncertainty, in regression and classification problems. Parti-cipants had to compete on a number of regression and classification tasks, and were evaluated by both traditional losses that only take into account point predictions and losses we proposed that evaluate the quality of the probabilistic predictions.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Quinonero Candela, J., Rasmussen, C., Sinz, F., Bousquet, O., Schölkopf, B. Evaluating Predictive Uncertainty Challenge In Machine Learning Challenges: Evaluating Predictive Uncertainty, Visual Object Classification, and Recognising Tectual Entailment, pages: 1-27, (Editors: J Quiñonero Candela and I Dagan and B Magnini and F d’Alché-Buc), Springer, Berlin, Germany, First PASCAL Machine Learning Challenges Workshop (MLCW), April 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
An Automated Combination of Sequence Motif Kernels for Predicting Protein Subcellular Localization

Zien, A., Ong, C.

(146), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, April 2006 (techreport)

Abstract
Protein subcellular localization is a crucial ingredient to many important inferences about cellular processes, including prediction of protein function and protein interactions. While many predictive computational tools have been proposed, they tend to have complicated architectures and require many design decisions from the developer. We propose an elegant and fully automated approach to building a prediction system for protein subcellular localization. We propose a new class of protein sequence kernels which considers all motifs including motifs with gaps. This class of kernels allows the inclusion of pairwise amino acid distances into their computation. We further propose a multiclass support vector machine method which directly solves protein subcellular localization without resorting to the common approach of splitting the problem into several binary classification problems. To automatically search over families of possible amino acid motifs, we generalize our method to optimize over multiple kernels at the same time. We compare our automated approach to four other predictors on three different datasets.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Zien, A., Ong, C. An Automated Combination of Sequence Motif Kernels for Predicting Protein Subcellular Localization (146), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, April 2006 (techreport)

PDF Web [BibTex]

no image
Training a Support Vector Machine in the Primal

Chapelle, O.

(147), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, April 2006, The version in the "Large Scale Kernel Machines" book is more up to date. (techreport)

Abstract
Most literature on Support Vector Machines (SVMs) concentrate on the dual optimization problem. In this paper, we would like to point out that the primal problem can also be solved efficiently, both for linear and non-linear SVMs, and there is no reason for ignoring it. Moreover, from the primal point of view, new families of algorithms for large scale SVM training can be investigated.

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Chapelle, O. Training a Support Vector Machine in the Primal (147), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, April 2006, The version in the "Large Scale Kernel Machines" book is more up to date. (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

no image
Estimating Predictive Variances with Kernel Ridge Regression

Cawley, G., Talbot, N., Chapelle, O.

In MLCW 2005, pages: 56-77, (Editors: Quinonero-Candela, J. , I. Dagan, B. Magnini, F. D‘Alché-Buc), Springer, Berlin, Germany, First PASCAL Machine Learning Challenges Workshop, April 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
In many regression tasks, in addition to an accurate estimate of the conditional mean of the target distribution, an indication of the predictive uncertainty is also required. There are two principal sources of this uncertainty: the noise process contaminating the data and the uncertainty in estimating the model parameters based on a limited sample of training data. Both of them can be summarised in the predictive variance which can then be used to give confidence intervals. In this paper, we present various schemes for providing predictive variances for kernel ridge regression, especially in the case of a heteroscedastic regression, where the variance of the noise process contaminating the data is a smooth function of the explanatory variables. The use of leave-one-out cross-validation is shown to eliminate the bias inherent in estimates of the predictive variance. Results obtained on all three regression tasks comprising the predictive uncertainty challenge demonstrate the value of this approach.

ei

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Cawley, G., Talbot, N., Chapelle, O. Estimating Predictive Variances with Kernel Ridge Regression In MLCW 2005, pages: 56-77, (Editors: Quinonero-Candela, J. , I. Dagan, B. Magnini, F. D‘Alché-Buc), Springer, Berlin, Germany, First PASCAL Machine Learning Challenges Workshop, April 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web DOI [BibTex]

no image
Machine Learning Methods For Estimating Operator Equations

Steinke, F., Schölkopf, B.

In Proceedings of the 14th IFAC Symposium on System Identification (SYSID 2006), pages: 6, (Editors: B Ninness and H Hjalmarsson), Elsevier, Oxford, United Kingdom, 14th IFAC Symposium on System Identification (SYSID), March 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
We consider the problem of fitting a linear operator induced equation to point sampled data. In order to do so we systematically exploit the duality between minimizing a regularization functional derived from an operator and kernel regression methods. Standard machine learning model selection algorithms can then be interpreted as a search of the equation best fitting given data points. For many kernels this operator induced equation is a linear differential equation. Thus, we link a continuous-time system identification task with common machine learning methods. The presented link opens up a wide variety of methods to be applied to this system identification problem. In a series of experiments we demonstrate an example algorithm working on non-uniformly spaced data, giving special focus to the problem of identifying one system from multiple data recordings.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Steinke, F., Schölkopf, B. Machine Learning Methods For Estimating Operator Equations In Proceedings of the 14th IFAC Symposium on System Identification (SYSID 2006), pages: 6, (Editors: B Ninness and H Hjalmarsson), Elsevier, Oxford, United Kingdom, 14th IFAC Symposium on System Identification (SYSID), March 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web [BibTex]

no image
Implicit Volterra and Wiener Series for Higher-Order Image Analysis

Franz, M., Schölkopf, B.

In Advances in Data Analysis: Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of The Gesellschaft für Klassifikation, 30, pages: 1, March 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
The computation of classical higher-order statistics such as higher-order moments or spectra is difficult for images due to the huge number of terms to be estimated and interpreted. We propose an alternative approach in which multiplicative pixel interactions are described by a series of Wiener functionals. Since the functionals are estimated implicitly via polynomial kernels, the combinatorial explosion associated with the classical higher-order statistics is avoided. In addition, the kernel framework allows for estimating infinite series expansions and for the regularized estimation of the Wiener series. First results show that image structures such as lines or corners can be predicted correctly, and that pixel interactions up to the order of five play an important role in natural images.

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Franz, M., Schölkopf, B. Implicit Volterra and Wiener Series for Higher-Order Image Analysis In Advances in Data Analysis: Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of The Gesellschaft für Klassifikation, 30, pages: 1, March 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF [BibTex]

no image
Cross-Validation Optimization for Structured Hessian Kernel Methods

Seeger, M., Chapelle, O.

Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, February 2006 (techreport)

Abstract
We address the problem of learning hyperparameters in kernel methods for which the Hessian of the objective is structured. We propose an approximation to the cross-validation log likelihood whose gradient can be computed analytically, solving the hyperparameter learning problem efficiently through nonlinear optimization. Crucially, our learning method is based entirely on matrix-vector multiplication primitives with the kernel matrices and their derivatives, allowing straightforward specialization to new kernels or to large datasets. When applied to the problem of multi-way classification, our method scales linearly in the number of classes and gives rise to state-of-the-art results on a remote imaging task.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Seeger, M., Chapelle, O. Cross-Validation Optimization for Structured Hessian Kernel Methods Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, February 2006 (techreport)

PDF Web [BibTex]

no image
Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning

Rasmussen, CE., Williams, CKI.

pages: 248, Adaptive Computation and Machine Learning, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, January 2006 (book)

Abstract
Gaussian processes (GPs) provide a principled, practical, probabilistic approach to learning in kernel machines. GPs have received increased attention in the machine-learning community over the past decade, and this book provides a long-needed systematic and unified treatment of theoretical and practical aspects of GPs in machine learning. The treatment is comprehensive and self-contained, targeted at researchers and students in machine learning and applied statistics. The book deals with the supervised-learning problem for both regression and classification, and includes detailed algorithms. A wide variety of covariance (kernel) functions are presented and their properties discussed. Model selection is discussed both from a Bayesian and a classical perspective. Many connections to other well-known techniques from machine learning and statistics are discussed, including support-vector machines, neural networks, splines, regularization networks, relevance vector machines and others. Theoretical issues including learning curves and the PAC-Bayesian framework are treated, and several approximation methods for learning with large datasets are discussed. The book contains illustrative examples and exercises, and code and datasets are available on the Web. Appendixes provide mathematical background and a discussion of Gaussian Markov processes.

ei

Web [BibTex]

ei Rasmussen, CE., Williams, CKI. Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning pages: 248, Adaptive Computation and Machine Learning, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, January 2006 (book)

Web [BibTex]

no image
Causal Inference by Choosing Graphs with Most Plausible Markov Kernels

Sun, X., Janzing, D., Schölkopf, B.

In Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics, pages: 1-11, ISAIM, January 2006 (inproceedings)

Abstract
We propose a new inference rule for estimating causal structure that underlies the observed statistical dependencies among n random variables. Our method is based on comparing the conditional distributions of variables given their direct causes (the so-called Markov kernels") for all hypothetical causal directions and choosing the most plausible one. We consider those Markov kernels most plausible, which maximize the (conditional) entropies constrained by their observed first moment (expectation) and second moments (variance and covariance with its direct causes) based on their given domain. In this paper, we discuss our inference rule for causal relationships between two variables in detail, apply it to a real-world temperature data set with known causality and show that our method provides a correct result for the example.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Sun, X., Janzing, D., Schölkopf, B. Causal Inference by Choosing Graphs with Most Plausible Markov Kernels In Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics, pages: 1-11, ISAIM, January 2006 (inproceedings)

PDF Web [BibTex]

no image
Learning operational space control

Peters, J., Schaal, S.

In Robotics: Science and Systems II (RSS 2006), pages: 255-262, (Editors: Gaurav S. Sukhatme and Stefan Schaal and Wolfram Burgard and Dieter Fox), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, RSS , 2006, clmc (inproceedings)

Abstract
While operational space control is of essential importance for robotics and well-understood from an analytical point of view, it can be prohibitively hard to achieve accurate control in face of modeling errors, which are inevitable in complex robots, e.g., humanoid robots. In such cases, learning control methods can offer an interesting alternative to analytical control algorithms. However, the resulting learning problem is ill-defined as it requires to learn an inverse mapping of a usually redundant system, which is well known to suffer from the property of non-covexity of the solution space, i.e., the learning system could generate motor commands that try to steer the robot into physically impossible configurations. A first important insight for this paper is that, nevertheless, a physically correct solution to the inverse problem does exits when learning of the inverse map is performed in a suitable piecewise linear way. The second crucial component for our work is based on a recent insight that many operational space controllers can be understood in terms of a constraint optimal control problem. The cost function associated with this optimal control problem allows us to formulate a learning algorithm that automatically synthesizes a globally consistent desired resolution of redundancy while learning the operational space controller. From the view of machine learning, the learning problem corresponds to a reinforcement learning problem that maximizes an immediate reward and that employs an expectation-maximization policy search algorithm. Evaluations on a three degrees of freedom robot arm illustrate the feasability of our suggested approach.

am ei

link (url) [BibTex]

am ei Peters, J., Schaal, S. Learning operational space control In Robotics: Science and Systems II (RSS 2006), pages: 255-262, (Editors: Gaurav S. Sukhatme and Stefan Schaal and Wolfram Burgard and Dieter Fox), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, RSS , 2006, clmc (inproceedings)

link (url) [BibTex]

no image
Reinforcement Learning for Parameterized Motor Primitives

Peters, J., Schaal, S.

In Proceedings of the 2006 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, pages: 73-80, IJCNN, 2006, clmc (inproceedings)

Abstract
One of the major challenges in both action generation for robotics and in the understanding of human motor control is to learn the "building blocks of movement generation", called motor primitives. Motor primitives, as used in this paper, are parameterized control policies such as splines or nonlinear differential equations with desired attractor properties. While a lot of progress has been made in teaching parameterized motor primitives using supervised or imitation learning, the self-improvement by interaction of the system with the environment remains a challenging problem. In this paper, we evaluate different reinforcement learning approaches for improving the performance of parameterized motor primitives. For pursuing this goal, we highlight the difficulties with current reinforcement learning methods, and outline both established and novel algorithms for the gradient-based improvement of parameterized policies. We compare these algorithms in the context of motor primitive learning, and show that our most modern algorithm, the Episodic Natural Actor-Critic outperforms previous algorithms by at least an order of magnitude. We demonstrate the efficiency of this reinforcement learning method in the application of learning to hit a baseball with an anthropomorphic robot arm.

am ei

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

am ei Peters, J., Schaal, S. Reinforcement Learning for Parameterized Motor Primitives In Proceedings of the 2006 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, pages: 73-80, IJCNN, 2006, clmc (inproceedings)

link (url) DOI [BibTex]

2003

no image
Support Vector Channel Selection in BCI

Lal, T., Schröder, M., Hinterberger, T., Weston, J., Bogdan, M., Birbaumer, N., Schölkopf, B.

(120), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany, December 2003 (techreport)

Abstract
Designing a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) system one can choose from a variety of features that may be useful for classifying brain activity during a mental task. For the special case of classifying EEG signals we propose the usage of the state of the art feature selection algorithms Recursive Feature Elimination [3] and Zero-Norm Optimization [13] which are based on the training of Support Vector Machines (SVM) [11]. These algorithms can provide more accurate solutions than standard filter methods for feature selection [14]. We adapt the methods for the purpose of selecting EEG channels. For a motor imagery paradigm we show that the number of used channels can be reduced significantly without increasing the classification error. The resulting best channels agree well with the expected underlying cortical activity patterns during the mental tasks. Furthermore we show how time dependent task specific information can be visualized.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

2003

ei Lal, T., Schröder, M., Hinterberger, T., Weston, J., Bogdan, M., Birbaumer, N., Schölkopf, B. Support Vector Channel Selection in BCI (120), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany, December 2003 (techreport)

PDF Web [BibTex]

no image
On the Complexity of Learning the Kernel Matrix

Bousquet, O., Herrmann, D.

In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 15, pages: 399-406, (Editors: Becker, S. , S. Thrun, K. Obermayer), The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, Sixteenth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), October 2003 (inproceedings)

Abstract
We investigate data based procedures for selecting the kernel when learning with Support Vector Machines. We provide generalization error bounds by estimating the Rademacher complexities of the corresponding function classes. In particular we obtain a complexity bound for function classes induced by kernels with given eigenvectors, i.e., we allow to vary the spectrum and keep the eigenvectors fix. This bound is only a logarithmic factor bigger than the complexity of the function class induced by a single kernel. However, optimizing the margin over such classes leads to overfitting. We thus propose a suitable way of constraining the class. We use an efficient algorithm to solve the resulting optimization problem, present preliminary experimental results, and compare them to an alignment-based approach.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Bousquet, O., Herrmann, D. On the Complexity of Learning the Kernel Matrix In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 15, pages: 399-406, (Editors: Becker, S. , S. Thrun, K. Obermayer), The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, Sixteenth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), October 2003 (inproceedings)

PDF Web [BibTex]

no image
Image Reconstruction by Linear Programming

Tsuda, K., Rätsch, G.

(118), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, October 2003 (techreport)

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Tsuda, K., Rätsch, G. Image Reconstruction by Linear Programming (118), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, October 2003 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

no image
Cluster Kernels for Semi-Supervised Learning

Chapelle, O., Weston, J., Schölkopf, B.

In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 15, pages: 585-592, (Editors: S Becker and S Thrun and K Obermayer), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 16th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), October 2003 (inproceedings)

Abstract
We propose a framework to incorporate unlabeled data in kernel classifier, based on the idea that two points in the same cluster are more likely to have the same label. This is achieved by modifying the eigenspectrum of the kernel matrix. Experimental results assess the validity of this approach.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Chapelle, O., Weston, J., Schölkopf, B. Cluster Kernels for Semi-Supervised Learning In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 15, pages: 585-592, (Editors: S Becker and S Thrun and K Obermayer), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 16th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), October 2003 (inproceedings)

PDF Web [BibTex]

no image
Mismatch String Kernels for SVM Protein Classification

Leslie, C., Eskin, E., Weston, J., Noble, W.

In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 15, pages: 1417-1424, (Editors: Becker, S. , S. Thrun, K. Obermayer), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, Sixteenth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), October 2003 (inproceedings)

Abstract
We introduce a class of string kernels, called mismatch kernels, for use with support vector machines (SVMs) in a discriminative approach to the protein classification problem. These kernels measure sequence similarity based on shared occurrences of k-length subsequences, counted with up to m mismatches, and do not rely on any generative model for the positive training sequences. We compute the kernels efficiently using a mismatch tree data structure and report experiments on a benchmark SCOP dataset, where we show that the mismatch kernel used with an SVM classifier performs as well as the Fisher kernel, the most successful method for remote homology detection, while achieving considerable computational savings.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Leslie, C., Eskin, E., Weston, J., Noble, W. Mismatch String Kernels for SVM Protein Classification In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 15, pages: 1417-1424, (Editors: Becker, S. , S. Thrun, K. Obermayer), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, Sixteenth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), October 2003 (inproceedings)

PDF Web [BibTex]

no image
Kernel Dependency Estimation

Weston, J., Chapelle, O., Elisseeff, A., Schölkopf, B., Vapnik, V.

In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 15, pages: 873-880, (Editors: S Becker and S Thrun and K Obermayer), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 16th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), October 2003 (inproceedings)

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Weston, J., Chapelle, O., Elisseeff, A., Schölkopf, B., Vapnik, V. Kernel Dependency Estimation In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 15, pages: 873-880, (Editors: S Becker and S Thrun and K Obermayer), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 16th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), October 2003 (inproceedings)

PDF Web [BibTex]

no image
Linear Combinations of Optic Flow Vectors for Estimating Self-Motion: a Real-World Test of a Neural Model

Franz, MO., Chahl, JS.

In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 15, pages: 1319-1326, (Editors: Becker, S., S. Thrun and K. Obermayer), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, Sixteenth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), October 2003 (inproceedings)

Abstract
The tangential neurons in the fly brain are sensitive to the typical optic flow patterns generated during self-motion. In this study, we examine whether a simplified linear model of these neurons can be used to estimate self-motion from the optic flow. We present a theory for the construction of an estimator consisting of a linear combination of optic flow vectors that incorporates prior knowledge both about the distance distribution of the environment, and about the noise and self-motion statistics of the sensor. The estimator is tested on a gantry carrying an omnidirectional vision sensor. The experiments show that the proposed approach leads to accurate and robust estimates of rotation rates, whereas translation estimates turn out to be less reliable.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Franz, MO., Chahl, JS. Linear Combinations of Optic Flow Vectors for Estimating Self-Motion: a Real-World Test of a Neural Model In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 15, pages: 1319-1326, (Editors: Becker, S., S. Thrun and K. Obermayer), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, Sixteenth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), October 2003 (inproceedings)

PDF Web [BibTex]